Miserae Hoc Tamen Unum
by Kaitaloipa
Summary: Dido's final message to Aeneas is sent through her sister, Anna, whom Dido describes as "the one woman Aeneas trusts." What if there was more to Anna and Aeneas' conversation than we see in the Aeneid itself? What if Dido's sister was Aeneas' one chance at a fate not dictated by the gods? Written while I was in Latin class, so I tried when possible to make it sound like the Latin.


"Miserae hoc tamen unum exsequere, Anna,  
mihi," she said, "solam nam perfidus illete colere,  
arcanos etiam tibi credere sensus;sola viri mollis aditus et tempora noras..."

["Nevertheless perform this one thing for me, miserable, Anna; for that treacherous man honors you alone, even entrusts his hidden feeling to you; you alone had known the soft approaches of the man and the (best) time." _The Aeneid, _IV.420-422]

Mad with burning angers, raging, Dido turned from Anna and left her reeling on the step. Anna, obedient, followed the familiar paths to the shore, mindful of the preparations and frenzy of the Teucrian sailors, careful of the ways by which to find the Trojan meanwhile was preparing the keels for the sea, supervising the fastening of the lines and the food having been gathered.

Anna first saw him at the prow, grim in his face and clad in Dardan garments.

"My lord," she called, "Goddess-born!"

He turned to her speaking and greeted her in return, saying, "Anna. What is it that you want?"

"A moment of your time, my lord."

He led her below deck. She waited until he had shut the door before beginning to speak, but he began first.

"I suppose you're here as a suppliant."

She stood startled. He smiled faintly at her and gestured for her to sit. She sat on the one couch in the cabin, older, a little dusty for time, but inlayed with gold. He remained standing, arms folded.

She addressed his feet:"The queen my sister Dido has commanded me to tell you-"

"Oh, for Jove's sake."

Anna fell silent. She chanced a look up, felt fire rush into her face, but with the curious abandon of hopelessness she did not look down again. She allowed herself to study his face: the black eyebrows that nearly met in the center, the sharp chin and nose, the ironical mouth. But none of these were her downfall, only the eyes. His eyes, from a curious combination of wrinkles and darkness, spoke more nobility than a mortal could possibly contain: compassion and strength, sorrow and duty - all the kingly attributes of a fallen warlord. By eyes alone he had been her master from the beginning.

"She's throwing a fit," Anna mumbled, looking down again. "I've never seen her like this before."

"We both know I never wanted to have to leave."

She heard exhaustion in his voice. She looked up.

Aeneas's face was gray in the light from the cabin porthole, but it was impossible to tell whether he might still be gray-faced in better light.

"I told her," said Aeneas, and she heard the simple confusion enter his voice, "I told her that Mercury came to me-"

"Everyone says that!" snapped Anna, distempered. "It's the oldest trick in the scroll and you expected her to fall for it! Fas my foot!"

"I wasn't lying," said Aeneas, now growing agitated. "It was just as I told her, I was overseeing the walls and he appeared on the ramparts, there, just as you sit-"

"Don't you try that on me!" Anna shouted. "You might fool her with your wild tales but we both know I'm not like my sister!"

"Wild tales," Aeneas repeated, his face becoming even whiter than it had been the moment before. It seemed almost to glow in the dark of the room.

Anna had always enjoyed a privileged position of frankness with the Trojan lord. He had also always known that she was in love with him.  
They had never spoken about it.

"I know you make up things," she said, frankness now degenerating into cruelty. "Like what?"

"Like Creusa!" Anna shouted. "Appeared to you as a ghost? 'Thrice you threw your arms around her'? Oh indeed!"

Aeneas seized her suddenly and roughly at the neck. He pushed her back against the wall and then stood there, shaking, as Anna went slack. Anna was exhilarated by his reaction, partly because a state of peril at the hands of a great man was in her estimation an honor; partly because she relished finally having hurt him instead of the other way around; partly because she had always wondered what his the palms of his hands felt like. They were hard and calloused from gripping spear shafts.

"You just told her that because you know she believes Sychaeus appeared to her in a dream," Anna pressed on, regardless of whether or not she believed what she was saying. "You were taking advantage of her story just to get into her bed-"

His hands tightened against her neck for a moment and she stopped. He leaned forward, ramming his knee against the side of the couch, and spoke into her ear. "You are pushing me, Anna, where you do not want to see me go."

"Oh?" Anna hissed. "I wish you would go there."

She regretted her words as soon as she had said them. Now they hung in the air, along with her lost dignity: her final breaths, that Aeneas, standing so close to her, would receive into his own lungs and then carry away with him, leaving. The cabin had become so silent that all they could hear were the activities outside. Aeneas released her neck abruptly. His hands no longer touched her. She sank back into the couch, disappointment curdling her mouth.

"Anna," he said.

"Don't."

"Will you not listen-"

"Let me be!"

She could feel burning in her eyes and knew she was close to losing control. The thought horrified her: she found her sister's antics repulsive and ridiculous. She refused to become one more ridiculous, hysterical woman that Aeneas would need to appease.

He sat next to her and pulled her hands from her face. "Anna, look at me," he said.

She did.

The understanding in his more-than-mortal eyes was unbearable, and painful, like fingers rubbing a raw wound. She felt naked without the usual pretense of disinterest, even though both of them had always known it was a lie. It was the pretense that mattered, not the truth. Now there was only the truth.

"I - do - have to found a city," Aeneas muttered. "That's not a falsehood."

Anna knew this. She felt the heat in her eyes lessen and the room suddenly became liquid in color: tears had come, despite her best efforts. She turned her face from him.

"Perhaps you haven't noticed," she said. "But it was only ever that city that made women fall in love with you."

Aeneas leaned forward, rested his face in his hands, and said nothing.

Anna wiped her eyes and looked at him. She observed the strong curve of his back, the ridges of his spine beneath his tunic, a bald spot behind his left ear where a battle scar had never quite gone away. She had always wanted to touch it and now she realized that, with the ships gone come morning, with Aeneas leaving forever, it did not now much matter that she walk away with dignity. She touched her fingers to the hairless, shiny weal, and he looked up.

"Who...?"

It was a lover's question. She knew Dido had already asked it, and Creusa before that. He touched her fingers with his and answered, "Diomede."

He was looking at her quizzically.

"I try to tell myself," said Anna, "that it would be best if you left. I would be happier. It wouldn't be torment to see you with her. But then I picture you gone and I realize I'd rather be tormented."

Aeneas said, "There are greater powers governing the lives of Dido and me than you take into account."

"You don't have to excuse it with gods, Aeneas! I know, I've always known, that I'm second-best. Second born, second in beauty, second in charm-"

"I'm not excusing anything. I'm saying - O gods _why_ am I so incompetent with women?"

"I've no idea but I would like to add that you mishandled your conversation with Elissa handsomely. 'I'd rather be back in Troy'! I still can't believe you said that-"

"I'm trying to tell you," interrupted Aeneas, patiently, "that I fell in love with Dido not of my own free will. Just as I follow Italy not of my own free will. Do you see? You, our friendship - that was us, and us alone. It's worth" - he swallowed, looked around the cabin as if to check for any hiding deities - "more than any god-given romance."

He had spoken so earnestly that Anna bit back her usual retorts. She fell short, looking at him in some surprise. Aeneas was the sort of person that regularly delivered heart-felt words: but heart-felt words in defiance of the gods were not so usual. For a moment she felt as if the cabin they stood in was completely set off from the rest of the world. The sounds of feet and voices and dragging crates outside were mere echoes of the place they had, for a mere moment, abandoned. Their world, within these four walls, contained only the two of them, and their honesty, without dignity or gods.

Aeneas's eyes were wide, as if he had felt it too: their sudden escape, their unearthly salvation. He was gripping her fingers. To move, to speak, to breathe, would risk the perfect stillness of this moment, but she was tired of avoiding risk.

"Run away with me," she said.

His ironical lips parted, no longer ironical: he caught his breath and laughed aloud.

"That's mad," he whispered back. He seemed dazed by the pure audacity of it.

"Be mad with me," she challenged. "Please, please be mad with me!"

She had seized him by the front of his tunic. Urgency thrilled through her, to pluck the moment before it was too late, before it became bruised and stale and overripe. He inhaled sharply, about to answer her, his eyes beginning to catch some of her burning-

"Papa?"

The door had opened.

They spun around, Aeneas shifting farther away from her on the couch, Anna's hands slipping from his tunic. Ascanius stood in the doorway, squinting into the moment burst and became irretrievable.

"Iulus," said Aeneas, standing up.

"Oh, hi Lady Anna," said Ascanius, who was fourteen and looked exactly like Aeneas, except for his eyes, which were blue. He looked between the two of them and seemed vaguely confused. "What are you doing here?"

Anna felt hatred burn her throat closed.

"She was bringing me a message from Queen Dido," Aeneas said, limply.

He cleared his throat, passed a hand across his forehead.

"What is it, Iulus?"

"Achates needs you."

"Tell him I'll be right there."

Iulus left.  
Aeneas turned back to Anna. She found she couldn't look at him. She had no words left.

"Allow me to escort you off the boat?"

She nodded mutely. They walked in silence, until at the gangplank he stopped and stood resolute. The eyes of the watching crew compelled light words.

"My regards to your sister," he said. Then, "She'll be all right?"

"She'll be fine," Anna dismissed, pushing her cares under her heart, mindful of the watching Trojans. "It's not like she's going to kill herself."

Aeneas nodded. With her having spoken he watched her leaving, for a moment, and then he turned himself to his fleet. And she left him, not seeing him again. So the gods willed it.

_Fata obstant placidasque viri deus obstruit auris.__**  
**_

[The fates oppose and the god blocks the calm ears of the man. _The Aeneid, _IV.440]


End file.
